Monday, February 25, 2013

THE POORER SILENCE OF READING

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More books to report on having read. (This is really for me; when someone asks what I've read lately I usually can't remember!) 27 books, so far, since mid-December: 17 of the old-fashioned variety and 10 on my Kobo.

—well, hello, Craig
Johnson! This one’s a mystery featuring Walter Longmire (there was/is an A&
E series, according to the cover). Walter’s a sheriff in Wyoming who has to
figure out who poisoned a woman in an assisted living home. There’s lots of
edge-of-seat bits and funny bits, my favourite being: “The place was packed as
we flooded in, all the patrons freezing at the sight of an armed sheriff, two
deputies, an Indian, and a construction worker; we probably looked like the
Village People.” There are several books in this series and I’ll be starting
another one shortly.

—and now for something
completely different! Published in 2003, this entertaining and always
interesting book looks at what happens to our bodies after we die. Roach is
interesting, thorough, and funny without being disrespectful (that last being
something I sort of cribbed from the back cover blurb but would have said
anyway). Here’s how it begins:

“The way
I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most
of your time is spent lying on your back. The brain has shut down. The flesh
begins to soften. Nothing much new happens, and nothing is expected of you.”

Having picked
it up at the used bookstore here and read that, how could I not bring it home?
Five stars.

Here I am, sort of reading Stiff. This was not staged, nor was I bored. It was just afternoon nap time.

—you may be wondering
why this poet hasn’t been reading much poetry on this trip. Other than the
Bernadette Mayer, which was the first thing I read, it’s been all fiction and
non-fiction. The answer is two-fold. I don’t much like reading poems on my
Kobo, assuming I can find poetry that has been translated to the e-book format
(and once I get home, I won’t be reading much else on it, either, but it’s great
for traveling) and the second hand bookstore here is wonderful, but lacking in
poetry. So far, I know of one contemporary book that showed up there but my
friend Peter got to it before I did. So I was quite excited when I spotted this
little lit mag down by the crocodiles, in a pile of books being sold along with
wooden cutting boards and spoons. The first asking price was 50 pesos, but then
a hurried conversation in Spanish ensued between a couple of the vendors and it
came down to 30 pesos which is a little less than $3.00 and quite a fair price
for an 8-year-old magazine. There’s a wonderful Moritz poem within, succinctly titled
Häagen-Dazs Freezer Truck Blocking View
of Ottawa River While Its Compressor Blots the Sounds of Nature. There’s a
Collins one, Silence, which ends:

And
there is the silence of this morning

which
I have broken with my pen,

a
silence that had piled up all night

like
snow falling in the darkness of the thouse—

the
silence before I wrote a word

and
the poorer silence now.

Seems it’s
even worse when you break that sort of silence with the sounds of a keyboard.

But what I
really enjoyed about this little mag is the letters
to the editor section, where a couple of people wrote in to dispute reviews
in an earlier issue, and then the reviewer got to rebut. Are there any Canadian
magazines that do that sort of thing, or are we all too nervous to review
anything negatively in the first place for fear of getting a bad review of
one’s own in the future, or worse, probably, no review at all?

—a draining read, this,
about a teenage girl’s descent into porn movie-dom thanks to her unquenchable
teenage horniness. It’s an gritty exploration of masturbation, blow jobs, hand
jobs, violence, dope-smoking and general teenage angst, writ ever so much
larger than when I was going through that stage (being a teenager), thanks to the ready
availability of just about everything now: online; on television; from your
favourite pusher down the road. Myra, the heroine, wants so desperately to lose
her virginity it was a relief for both of us when she finally does. She’s also
a pretty serious reader and is writing an essay on the master-slave
relationship. This book kind of reminded me of Beautiful Losers (you know, by that guy who makes beautiful music
and is still touring even though he’s approaching 80), I think it was, although
reading that one back in the late 60’s was a lot more fun as I had hormones in
those days.

—told you I’d be back to
one of his! In this one, Sheriff Walt Longmire has to get to the bottom of a
political scandal. It begins with a bang when his daughter Cady, an
up-and-coming lawyer in Philadelphia, is attacked and nearly killed. Many of
the characters from the last book are back, including Dog (his dog), his trusty
deputy, Victoria Moretti, and longtime friend, Henry Standing Bear. Once again,
this guy can really tell a story!

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ABOUT PURPLE MOUNTAIN POETRY

Okay, this is it. Where I can be found in cyberspace, should anyone be looking. In real space, I'm surrounded by mountains that often look purple. Mountains, as in those stoic granite guardians that rise above all the trials of the day, assuming your day has trials, and sooner or later, most of them do. This is where I talk about poetry, mostly. There's the occasional rant, for good measure. But no whining. Absolutely no whining.

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ABOUT ME

I've been interested in words ever since I can remember. I write poetry, a little prose, and publish chapbooks through my imprint, NIB Publishing. NIB stands for Nose in Book, where mine can usually be found.